Hi,

I have a 75 gallon pond in my front yard (northern New Jersey) and added 6 tadpoles to it this summer along with a few large comets. The pond is only 18 inches deep so I prefer to bring everything indoors in the winter. Four of the tadpoles turned into frogs and I have them in a 10 gallon tank. The body of one of them is about six inches long. The others are smaller. I would like to know what to feed them and how to care for them over the winter. They don't seem to eat crickets. I did buy some frog food but they don't seem to eat it either.
I have had them inside about two weeks.


Please advise. Thanks

Raven 242

Hi raven242,

Your little froggies may only recognize live food that is wiggling, until you spoil them to the point where they will eat anything. Last winter when my green frog tadpole turned first turned into a tiny frog, the crickets were too big to feed it and I really needed to find something smaller. I happened to have a bag of wormy bird seed and picked out some of the little white caterpillars and dropped them onto a rock. The rock was sloped so it was easier for the young frog to get out of the water and it quickly became the *feeding* rock. Eventually, I could roll a freeze dried cricket down the rock and it would be gone before it hit the water. Freeze dried crickets can be broken down into smaller pieces too but I have a hard time doing that.

Do you have your frog tank set up so that they can get out of the water easily if they need to? What kind of frogs do you have? Hopefully someone with more experience can reply back and help you :)


Robyn has some info for keeping a frog indoors, here is the link in case you haven't already visited: http://www.fishpondinfo.com/frog3.htm#indoors

And I found this link at Frogland helpful for learning how to set up a half dry / half wet tank: http://allaboutfrogs.org/info/housing/index.html

Hope you have good luck taking care of your frogs.

})i({ Jennifer

A six inch frog already from this year? It must be a bullfrog. Be aware that larger bullfrogs will eat smaller bullfrogs. If the smaller ones are a lot smaller, I would keep them separately. What is the temperature in the frog setup? If it's above 60 degrees F, they should be eating. Above 70 degrees F, they should be eating a lot. How is the 10 gallon set up? Is it mostly water or land? Young bullfrogs like to be in the water most of the time so it's harder to feed them terrestrial prey (because they drown). The frogs will only eat living animals (or ones they think are alive like Nessie's rolling crickets). In addition to crickets for the bigger frogs, try mealworms, waxworms, earthworms, or even fish (if you can stand doing that). Tiny frogs can eat live blackworms, wingless fruitflies, and pinhead crickets. Grain moth caterpillars are often found in old bags of feed from the farm store (like Nessie's old seed bag). We have tons of the adult moths flying around our garage in the warm months since my mother gets infested corn for the deer. I can stand the moths more than the weevils when they come.

Hi,

The ten gallon tank has about a third of the area set up with rocks to enable them to climb out of the water. I notice the smaller frogs climb out but not the big guy. I thought the larger one was the same species since they all look the same. Also I still have one tadpole that never seemed to get beyond growing a tiny pair of legs.

I read in the site that you could induce them into hibernation by filling the tank halfway and reducing the temperature to between 35 and 45 degrees. Need to reduce the light also. I have a basement area where the temperature is close to that but perhaps 45 to a high of 50 most of the time. Is that too warm? Can I put the tadpole in there as well?

Thanks for any information about hibernation.

Raven242

If it's 50 degrees F, that's probably too warm for good hibernation. If the frogs are warm enough to move around, they'll need food. If you can get it below 45 degrees F, they should hibernate. If it's warmer, you'll have to feed them now and then and keep an eye on them. While hibernating, frogs eat almost nothing so they shouldn't bother the tadpole (if it's cold enough).